Art and Embodiment

From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness

Paul Crowther

Art and Embodiment

From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness

Paul Crowther

Description

In his Critical Aesthetics and Postmodernism, Paul Crowther argued that art and aesthetic experiences have the capacity to humanize. In Art and Embodiment he develops this theme in much greater depth, arguing that art can bridge the gap between philosophy's traditional striving for generality and completeness, and the concreteness and contingency of humanity's basic relation to the world. As the key element in his theory, he proposes an ecological definition of art. His strategy involves first mapping out and analyzing the logical boundaries and ontological structures of the aesthetic domain. He then considers key concepts from this analysis in the light of a tradition in Continental philosophy (notably the work of Kant, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Hegel) which--by
virtue of the philosophical significance that it assigns to art--significantly anticipates the ecological conception. On this basis, Crowther is able to give a full formulation of his ecological definition. Art, in making sensible or imaginative material into symbolic form, harmonizes and conserves what is unique and what is general in human experience. The aesthetic domain answers basic needs intrinsic to self-consciousness itself, and art is the highest realization of such needs. In the creation and reception of art the embodied subject is fully at home with his or her environment.

Art and Embodiment

From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness

Paul Crowther

Table of Contents

Introduction: An Ecological Theory of ArtPart One: Varieties and Structures of Aesthetic Experience 1. Aesthetic Domain: A Logical Geography2. Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Art3. Alienation and Disalienation in Abstract ArtPart Two: The Philosophical Significance of Art 4. Fundamental Ontology and Transcendent Beauty: An Approach to Kant's Aesthetics5. Heidegger and the Question of Aesthetics6. Merleau-Ponty: Vision and Painting7. Art, Architecture, and Self-Consciousness: An Exploration of Hegel's AestheticsPart Three: The Ecological Significance of Art 8. The Needs of Self-Consciousness: From Aesthetic Experience to Unalienated Artifice9. Art and the Needs of Self-Consciousness10.
Defining Art: Questions of Creativity and OriginalityAppendixConclusionIndex

Art and Embodiment

From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness

Paul Crowther

Reviews and Awards

"His arguments are lucid, clearly stated, and, above all, absorbing...a welcome contribution to a subject area of philosophy which straddles many disciplines....Students of the visual arts and of their theory would do well to verse themselves in this kind of work."--The Philosophical Quarterly